This is too bad. Along with VGC, Digital Press was one of the first sites I used when I started out collecting. The site was a great resource back then, especially the famous DP Rarity Guide. The guide is very outdated now, and PriceCharting.com has made price guides obsolete anyway. Still, I have the DP guides in book form and find myself referencing them from time to time, even if just for the notes on certain obscure games. No doubt, the forums have died a slow death. Either way, the forums are a great resource for info, so I hope they preserve them somehow.

One thing is for sure, and that's that it's very hard for one person to keep an unpaid passion going for such a long period of time. While disappointing, I'm not surprised that Joe Santulli moved on a long time ago to focus on other pursuits. We're pretty fortunate that Dave has somehow managed to keep this place going for nearly 20 years without burning out or even missing a beat.

If it's any consolation, I visited Joe's latest project, the National Videogame Museum, last month while vacationing in Texas, and I have to say that it well exceeded my expectations and is a huge asset to the gaming community. I hope to post a review of it here eventually.

Executive summaryEverything is now back to normal. All of the site's sections are available and accessible. This includes the forum and the other sections of the site. Joe, the store, and the museum are good too.

Timeline breakdown

Aug - Oct: Joe, the site's owner, accidentally doesn't pay the bill for this site's hosting to its Web host, DreamHost. Oct 10: Everything hosted by DreamHost "disappears" due to non-payment. The forum is hosted at DigitalOcean so it continues. (Everything DP can't be stored at DigitalOcean due to file size concerns with the hosting plan.) Oct 12: I, the site's admin, notice the missing parts of the site and write an e-mail to Joe. I also write about what's happening on the forum. Oct 13: Still not having heard from Joe, I call his phone number. The number is disconnected. I call the museum. I talk to John Hardie. I explain. He takes a note to convey to Joe. I ask for Joe's phone number. I am given a dummy phone number meant for solicitors, yet I don't know that's what it is at the time. I call the dummy number and it endless rings with no answer. Meanwhile, Joe gets the message from John about the site's situation. At this time, I am talking with one of the store's employees who says she will also convey my memo to Joe. Joe attempts to send a text message to my phone number - however, it is a number that doesn't have text messaging service as it is a "regular phone number," so the message silently disappears into the void. Joe pays a DreamHost bill that is for another Web site of his (not the digitpress.com group) and presumes that the situation is resolved as he doesn't hear from me afterward. Oct 15: Still not having heard from Joe, I call the dummy number 2 - 3 times throughout the day. Concerned, I make a post about the situation here at the forum. Oct 19: The store's employee(s), having a meeting with Joe (over the phone I guess), mention the "sites are missing" situation. Oct 19/20: Joe, having spoken with PapaStu (a longtime mod here), delves back into his records, and realizes that there is another DreamHost account to pay (the digitpress.com one). He pays the bill. The non-forum site sections are restored to the Internet. Oct 20: Joe writes an e-mail to me in the morning, explaining some things from his side. He gives a current cell phone number in the message. I call and we discuss things further. Everything is smoothed.

What now?For now, things go back to normal. Though I have some backup copies, I am going to make additional, more recent copies and of everything both recent and old. I have a slow Internet connection, so I'll first make an off-site backup of these servers to my server, then copy that to my local computer. Later, I'll still research migrating an offline copy of this forum from vBulletin to phpBB... you know, Just-in-Case(TM).